In Havana and beyond, Cubans are relying on mobile portals and online delivery services run by the Cuban diaspora to get basic food and household necessities—just as U.S. sanctions tighten. From a Louisville grandmother clicking “add to cart” to deliveries rea
When Carmen Deulofeu taps a few buttons on her laptop in Kentucky, the effect lands more than 1,000 miles away—where her sister in Havana uses that order to feed her family. It’s not a transaction that feels distant. It’s the difference between a pantry that lasts and one that runs out.
Deulofeu. 68. has been sending necessities through Supermarket23. a website that lets people “add to cart” and pay online for items that are often hard to find in Cuba—or simply impossible on a Cuban salary. Kidney beans. Chicken legs. Powdered milk. Cooking oil. Eggs. Sugar. Café. For her sister. who is 75 and a retired optometrist. the need is urgent and emotional: the phone calls have turned into tears.
“She’s out of shampoo, out of soap, out of detergent,” Deulofeu said. Her sister has declined to speak publicly, fearing the Cuban government would retaliate. Deulofeu said that even as the island proposes reforms. the United States maintains a pressure campaign—ramping up economic sanctions and continuing an oil embargo that has plunged much of the island into darkness.
Supermarket23 is one of several online delivery companies playing a crucial role as Cuba’s situation deteriorates. Others include Cuballama. Mercatoria and Katapulk—often referred to as “Cuban Amazons.” Many offer mobile apps. making the process resemble everyday online shopping. including on a smartphone.
Deulofeu said the use of “jámazon,” a portmanteau combining the Cuban slang for eating and the U.S. online retailer Amazon, is “absolutely essential” right now—so essential that even these online food delivery services are drawing U.S. scrutiny.
For families in Cuba, it isn’t only about groceries. It’s about avoiding the cascade that follows when basic goods disappear: fewer meals, fewer hygiene supplies, fewer ways to keep children and households steady.
Mobile phones lead to mobile supermarkets
The online revolution arrived in Cuba in 2018. That year. the Cuban government allowed people for the first time to access the internet on smartphones. introducing Cubans to phone-based apps. said Ted Henken. a professor of Cuban studies at Baruch College and co-author of “Cuba’s Digital Revolution: Citizen Innovation and State Policy.”.
Henken said that as Cubans fled the island in large numbers—more than 2.6 million have left since 2020. according to Cuban demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos—apps helped people abroad support relatives still in Cuba. Exiled Cubans used U.S.-based online platforms such as Cuballama and Katapulk to send goods to families on the island.
Once a month, Alejandro de Lucia, 62, a Cuban native living in Long Island, opens the Supermarket23 app and selects meats, rice and other items to send to his in-laws in Cojimar, where his relatives are in their 80s. He has also sent fans and batteries through Cuballama.
De Lucia said the items are pricier than what he’d find at a local Costco or Target. But as conditions in Cuba spiral, deliveries have become essential. He pointed to the scarcity even of things like rice, noting that government rations are hard to get.
“In Cuba, there isn’t even food,” he said.
A cost example highlights the distance between the shopping screens and the local reality. De Lucia described a package priced at $35 plus $8 shipping that could allow a family in Florida to send four pounds of smoked pork. a liter of cooking oil. and a carton of 30 eggs—items increasingly hard to find on Cuban market shelves—in a refrigerated box to a family in Havana.
Trade data also shows the footprint of the private sector inside this supply chain. In 2025, exports specifically directed to Cuba’s private small and medium enterprises reached $173.6 million, according to an analysis published by Columbia University’s School of Law.
Henken said the parallel is visible even while Cuba is in crisis: “there’s this kind of quiet expansion both by the private sector and trade between Cuba and the United States.”
When delivery becomes a daily lifeline
To test how the system works. a package of chicken breast. chicken livers. smoked pork. palomilla steak. and strawberry-filled cookies was ordered to a family in Havana through online service Cuballama. The order totaled around $55 plus another $11 in taxes and shipping fees—more than four times the average Cuban monthly salary.
The purchase was made from an app on an iPhone in Austin, Texas, with payment processed using a U.S. credit card. Under 24 hours later. a white. covered electric tricycle hauling a cart full of bagged goods arrived at Habana Vieja. where Jorge Luis del Valle lives with his wife. Danneys. and their 4-year-old daughter. Emma.
The delivery driver checked the contents and address through an order on WhatsApp on a smartphone. handed the items to del Valle. and then sped off to the next delivery. The food was wrapped in separate bags, in accurate amounts, still chilled from refrigeration, and “seemingly fresh,” del Valle said.
“All seems to be in good shape,” del Valle said.
That small moment of normalcy sits against a backdrop of grinding instability. Del Valle described 20-hour blackouts, sometimes longer. He tries to sleep in a sweltering front living room with windows open, relying on the few hours at daybreak when the power returns to run the air conditioner.
Del Valle. a visual artist who ran a bed-and-breakfast until bookings dried up in February because of the energy crisis. said he has used online delivery services a few times before. For Cubans like him—people without family in the United States—he said the expense keeps the service out of reach. He said he would rather have friends or family outside Cuba send cash so he can buy food on the black market or in privately run shops.
He also said these services make more sense in rural areas outside Havana, where food is scarcer, and where scarcity can highlight the divide between those with access to dollar-linked support and those without.
“If you don’t have family [in the U.S.], if you don’t work in the tourism sector, if you don’t have a job that pays in U.S. dollars, there is no way whatsoever for you to be able to afford this service,” del Valle said.
Mercatoria, based in Cuba, shows how the delivery model has also become a job engine. Aldo Álvarez started Mercatoria in 2021 with three other Cuban partners. Unlike some other companies, Mercatoria is based in Cuba and run by Cubans.
Since launch. Álvarez said. Mercatoria diversified into logistics. fuel delivery. and transport. including hauling containers from Cuban ports to different provinces. Yet it still delivers goods to households—something families have increasingly come to rely on as the situation worsens. Álvarez said food products are flowing into Cuba from the United States. but people can’t afford them “unless a family in the United States is sending packages.”.
He framed the larger stake as economic integration. “If you go out into the streets of Havana or the streets of Santiago de Cuba, there are products,” Álvarez said. “You just can’t buy what you need.”
Jobs and private-sector efficiency are part of the pitch, too. John Kavulich. president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. a trade group that has been dealing with Cuba since 1994. said the services provide much-needed food. employ Cubans. and give people a firsthand look at how the private sector works.
“Hugely critical,” he said. “These companies reinforce the failure of the Cuban government to provide for its people, notwithstanding the impact of U.S. policy, regulation, and statutes.”
The tension behind the scenes: sanctions that can reach delivery networks
Not all deliveries are considered equal under U.S. rules. The U.S. embargo on Cuba prohibits selling to the Cuban government or government-related entities, though agricultural commodities and medicines are exceptions.
Even so-called “innocuous apps” can run into hard limits when U.S. sanctions expand. Some companies may soon be scaling back or closing altogether due to new U.S. sanctions that threaten their business models.
On June 15, online delivery platform Envioscuba.com announced it would be shutting down. The message on its website said, “Due to reasons beyond our control, our platform can no longer provide services,” adding no further details.
Envioscuba uses warehouses controlled by GAESA, the conglomerate run by Cuba’s military, which was recently sanctioned, according to the Associated Press. On June 23, the Trump administration announced another round of sanctions aimed at GAESA-connected entities.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X: “The Cuban military-controlled conglomerate GAESA has persistently served as the main vector for regime elites to steal the island’s few resources. diverting them for repression. anti-American subversion and spying instead of schools. power plants. and basic necessities for the Cuban people.”.
Hugo Cancio, a Miami-based Cuban-American entrepreneur, began the online delivery service Katapulk around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. He opened warehouses across Cuba—allowed under the U.S. embargo if a business falls under one of the exceptions—and employed more than 300 Cubans to process and deliver goods.
Delivery vans with orange Katapulk logos carried shipments across the island. But a few years ago, Cancio scaled back. He closed the warehouses and consolidated his work force to about a dozen in a single warehouse in Havana. Instead of shipping the goods themselves, private Cuban entrepreneurs use Katapulk to sell and deliver goods to customers.
Cancio said the remodel removed any connection to the Cuban government. Katapulk today delivers everything from ground beef to batteries and flashlights to about 2,000 homes—serving about 10,000 Cubans—each day.
“Everything we do has always been focused on helping the diaspora help their families in Cuba,” Cancio said. “That’s been our business model from the very beginning.”
Even medicine and remittances raise compliance problems
Cubamax. another online delivery company. partnered with the Cuban state-owned freight company Aerovaradero to rapidly deliver medicine and perishable food—allowed under U.S. statute. Cubamax also signed a deal with the Central Bank of Cuba to process and distribute remittances after it had to sever ties with a different company that was owned by the Cuban military.
Aymee Valdivia. an attorney at Holland & Knight who advises companies doing business in Cuba. said keeping money out of the Cuban government’s hands while helping Cuban people is tricky. She said, “Treasury [U.S. Department of the Treasury] understands perfectly well that the Cuban government will likely take a cut. and that’s the way Cuba works.”.
Local politics have also spilled into the business side. The Miami-Dade County tax collector—described as the first in 60 years to run for office instead of being appointed—revoked the tax licenses of 20 businesses he claims were illegally doing business with Cuba. At least one business sued for defamation and was granted an injunction.
Broader sanctions could intensify the risk. María José Espinosa, executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, said sanctions on remittance and food delivery apps could further cripple the island nation.
“Instead of hurting the government that would directly impact the Cuban people’s basic necessities and survival,” Espinosa said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the administration sees it as another pressure tool, but the consequences would be very dangerous.”
What the apps really represent in daily life
For the diaspora, the apps turn distance into a system. At Deulofeu’s home in Louisville. she scrolled through lists of what her family had most recently sent to her sister’s family—staples meant to keep them going for another few weeks. Before she hit send. her son. Daynier Adan. added beer and some meat to the cart because his cousin’s birthday was coming up.
Deulofeu and her husband, a truck driver, emigrated from Cuba in 2004 after winning a spot in “el bombo,” a lottery system that allowed Cubans to legally enter the United States.
They are now part of an estimated 60,000 people of Cuban descent living in Kentucky, most in Louisville. Deulofeu’s community exists as a hub in part because of the lower cost of living, but family ties across the Florida Straits remain the emotional center of the story.
The sequence is plain in the facts themselves: when delivery networks work. families can get food and household basics quickly and in cooled. measured packages; when sanctions and oversight tighten—such as with Envioscuba.com’s shutdown or restrictions tied to GAESA—part of that channel can abruptly narrow.
On a day when Cuba’s power can fail for 20 hours at a time. the ability to send a carton of 30 eggs or a liter of cooking oil isn’t a luxury. It’s a quiet. contested form of supply—one delivered through apps that are now entangled in the same political pressure campaign that is reshaping the island’s survival economy.
Cuba sanctions U.S.-Cuba trade Supermarket23 Cuballama Mercatoria Katapulk Envioscuba.com GAESA Marco Rubio remittances online delivery apps Cuban diaspora Havana shortages